This edition of the Register of Members' Interests
is the first to be published for the parliament elected in May
2005. It contains all the interests registered by Members up
to 1 November 2005.

The Register was set up following a Resolution of
the House of 22 May 1974. The maintenance of the Register is one
of the principal duties laid on the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards by House of Commons Standing Order No. 150.

The purpose of the Register is to encourage
transparency, and through transparency, accountability. It is
"to provide information of any pecuniary interest or other
material benefit which a Member receives which might reasonably
be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches
or votes in Parliament, or actions taken in the capacity of a
Member of Parliament"[1].
The Register is not intended to be an indicator of a Member's
personal wealth; nor is registration of an interest in any way
an indication that a Member is at fault.

Transparency is also promoted by the obligation on
Members to declare in debates or proceedings of the House
and dealings with other Members, Ministers or Crown servants,
all interests, whether registrable or not and including indirect,
past and future interests which are relevant to the business in
hand[2].

While the obligation to register outside employment,
sponsorship, property and shareholdings is absolute, in respect
of other gifts and benefits the requirement is only to register
those interests which in any way arise out of membership of the
House. Consonant with this principle, the interests of spouses,
partners and dependent children are registrable only if they arise
out of their relative's position as a Member, or if they are held
jointly with, or by, the Member.

The interests which are to be registered are set
out in the "Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules relating
to the Conduct of Members", first agreed in July 1996[3]
and revised in May 2002[4]
and July 2005[5].

The financial thresholds over which an interest
must be registered are mainly based, for convenience, on percentages
of an MP's salary: one per cent, or currently £590, for employment,
gifts and hospitality; ten per cent, or £5,900, for rental
income; and a hundred per cent, or £59,000, for property
and shares. The exception is sponsorship, where the threshold
has been set at £1,000 to match that set for registration
with the Electoral Commission.

Continuing interests like employment or property
remain on the Register until the Member asks for them to be removed.
'One-off' benefits like gifts, visits and donations appear with
their date of registration and remain on the Register for a year
from that date and until they have appeared in one printed Register.

Entries made in the Register
aim to give a clear description of the nature and scope of the
interests declared. Subject to the Rules, however, each Member
is responsible for the content and style of his or her own entry[6].

Interests are registered under the following ten
categories.

1. Remunerated directorships

In this section Members are required to register
any remunerated directorships, paying them more than £590
a year, which they hold in public or private companies. Members
are also required to register directorships which are unremunerated
if the companies are associated with, or subsidiaries of, a company
in which the Member holds a remunerated directorship.

2. Remunerated employment, office, profession
etc.

This is the section for registering outside employment,
professions and sources of remuneration (of more than £590
a year) not clearly covered elsewhere in the registration form.
Members are not expected to register the amount of their earnings
except where they are 'providing services in the capacity of a
Member of Parliament'[7],
for example making representations to a government department,
providing advice on parliamentary or public affairs or sponsoring
functions in parliamentary buildings. In such cases they must
register the amount of their earnings within bands of £5,000
and, with the exception of speaking or writing engagements, must
also deposit for public inspection an 'agreement for the provision
of services'[8].

3. Clients

In this section Members are required to disclose
the names of clients (other than companies or organisations already
identified in sections 1 and 2, but including clients of those
companies or organisations) for whom they provide 'services in
the capacity of a Member of Parliament'.

4. Sponsorship or financial or material support

In this section the Member is required to
register any donation of more than £1,000 received by the
constituency association which is linked either to candidacy at
an election or to membership of the House, and also any other
form of financial or material support as a Member. A 'linked'
donation is defined as one 'expressly tied to the Member by name
e.g. if it is a contribution to the Member's fighting fund or
a donation which has been solicited or encouraged by the Member'.
The obligation to register does not apply to constituency development
agreements and other arrangements in which the identity of the
Member is not a factor.

5. Gifts, benefits and hospitality (U.K.)

This section is for the registration of any gift
or material advantage received from a United Kingdom source, which
in any way relates to membership of the House. Tangible gifts
and other benefits over £590 in value must be registered.

A number of benefits are offered to all Members,
or to all Members within a particular geographical area. The
Guide to the Rules specifies that gifts and benefits known to
be available to all Members need not be registered, and the Committee
on Standards and Privileges has ruled that this exemption should
include benefits made available to certain Members on a geographical
basis.

Among such regionally or generally available benefits,
those which are currently known to be, or potentially to be, of
registrable value are:

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First Great Eastern Trains station car park passes

Thameslink Trains station car park passes

Southwest Trains station car park passes (restricted
to use on parliamentary business)

British Airways privilege cards

British Midland privilege cards

Not all Members take up these benefits when they
are offered, and those who do use them to varying extents.

6. Overseas visits

This section covers overseas visits, made by
Members or their spouses or partners, which in any way arise out
of membership of the House, where the cost of any such visit has
not been wholly borne by the Member or by United Kingdom public
funds. Several categories of visit, made by Members in the normal
course of their parliamentary duties, are exempted from registration.
For the most part these are visits paid for from UK public funds
or by a Member's own political party[9].
Here again, the threshold for registration is currently £590.

Where a fee is received for an engagement abroad
and travel and accommodation are also paid, the item is usually
entered under Category 2.

7. Overseas benefits
and gifts

This section is subject to the same rules as
section 5, but covers gifts and benefits from overseas rather
than UK sources.

8. Land and property

The requirement in this section is to register
land or property worth, currently, more than £59,000 (other
than any home used for the personal residential purposes of the
Member or the Member's spouse or partner) or from which in aggregate
an income in excess of £5,900 is derived.

9. Registrable
shareholdings

In this section Members are required to register
the name of any public or private company or other body in which,
to their knowledge, they have a beneficial interest in a shareholding
(a) of more than 15% of the issued share capital or (b) worth
more than £59,000 at the preceding 5th April.

10. Miscellaneous
and unremunerated interests

This is a discretionary section for the registration
by Members of interests which do not clearly fall within any
of the above categories but which they consider to fall within
the Register's purpose. In accordance with the nature of the Register
as a record of pecuniary and material interests and the wishes
of the Standards & Privileges Committee, unremunerated charitable
and voluntary commitments are not, of themselves, registered,
though if a material benefit arises from them that should be registered
in the appropriate category.

Administrative arrangements
and inspection

Under the authority of the Committee on Standards
and Privileges, the Register is published by The Stationery Office
after the beginning of a Parliament and thereafter approximately
once a year. The published Register and its regular updates are
on the Internet and can be accessed as follows:

It is the responsibility of Members to notify
changes in their registrable interests within four weeks of the
change occurring; and between its annual printings the Register
is updated every two months or so, both in a looseleaf version
and on the Web. The looseleaf version is open for public inspection
in the Committee Office of the House of Commons (Tel: 020 7219
4300). It may be inspected when the House is sitting between
11 am and 5 pm on Monday to Thursday and between 11 am and 3 pm
on Friday. During parliamentary recesses, and especially during
August, the hours of inspection are more limited. A copy of the
current looseleaf Register is also placed in the Library of the
House of Commons for the use of Members.

Copies of the Code of Conduct and Guide to the
Rules relating to the Conduct of Members may be obtained from
The Stationery Office as House of Commons paper no. 351 of Session
2005-2006, and viewed on the Internet at:

The House of Commons website also contains
further information about the rules applying to Members, the procedure
to be adopted in the event of complaints of failure to register
and the rule against lobbying for reward or consideration. Any
queries about these matters may be addressed, preferably in writing,
to the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards,
House of Commons, London SW1A OAA.